Transcript
Welcome to Mystery Books podcast, where we talk about mysteries in all of their forms from classics, golden age novels to contemporary cozies. I’m mystery author Sara Rosett, and this is season one, episode eight, and it’s all about The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith by Patricia Wentworth. The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith was published in 1923. We’re going back to the classic mysteries in this episode. We’ve done a couple of these and then we’ve done a couple of more modern mysteries. So now we’re going back to the Golden Age.
Book Blurb
Here’s the blurb: London, 1922, Jane Smith, gently-bred and level-headed, is one of the “great unemployed.” She lost her job and her landlady has locked her out. Except for an estranged cousin, she has no relatives to rely on. She’s literally counting her last shillings when a chance encounter in the park sets her on a course for an astonishing adventure. If you like role swap plots with intrigue and conspiracy and a smart and savvy heroine who works with a dashing Scotland Yard man, you’ll enjoy The Astonishing Adventures of Jane Smith, one of Patricia Wentworth’s first mysteries.
Normally, at this point in the episode, I would read the first line of the first chapter. But I’m not going to do that today because the first chapter is essentially a prologue. It’s not labeled that, but that’s what it is. So we’re going to start with Chapter two, and I’m going to read you a little bit more than the first line, because it’s a great introduction to Jane. So you get a little bit of what she’s like in this little introduction.
“Jane Smith sat on a bench in Kensington Gardens. Her entire worldly fortune lay in her lap. It consisted of two shillings and eleven pence. She had already counted the pennies four times because there really should have been three shillings. She was now engaged in making a list in parallel columns of a) those persons from whom she might seek financial assistance, and b) the excellent reasons which prevented her from approaching them.”
As you can see from this couple little lines, you find out that you’re in London, you’re in Kensington Gardens, and that Jane Smith is, she is in dire circumstances. She has hardly any money left and she really doesn’t have anyone she can go to to ask for help. And we also learn a little bit about her personality. She’s very logical and very levelheaded. She’s making a list and trying to solve her problem in an orderly way.
So the gist of the book is that Jane is sitting on this park bench in London and someone mistakes her for her cousin, who she is estranged from. She doesn’t really know this cousin. There’s been a split in the family, but her cousin is in a very perilous situation. And a proposal is made to give Jane something to do so she can survive so she doesn’t have to go to the workhouse and that is to trade places with her cousin.
Now, I think it’s really interesting that as a character, Jane is very logical and very smart in what she does. She has a lot of emotions throughout the book. She has fear and uncertainty, but her way of looking at each problem is very analytically, almost. So it’s very interesting that Wentworth uses this type of character in this situation, because the story is an astonishing adventure. And I think that Jane’s levelheadedness sort of balances out the amazing-ness of the rest of the story. Because Jane is so grounded, we are able to go with her into the story that has these amazing and unbelievable almost things happening.
All right. So I’ve already said, it opens in London. Jane does decide to trade places with her cousin. I don’t think that’s a huge spoiler because otherwise there would be no story here. The majority of the book takes place in Marsh Country. It’s a flat, boggy area near the sea. And there’s this old house there. It’s called, “a huge grey pile set against the sky full of little, racing clouds” is how it’s described when Jane first sees it. And there’s lots of barriers around the house and lots of wire and gates and just things that let Jane and the reader know that this is not your normal country house. Lots of Gothic overtones in this story. All right.
Story Behind the Story
So a story behind the story and fun facts. Patricia Wentworth was the pen name for Dora Amy Elles. She’s best known for her Miss Silver mysteries, and they’re rather like Miss Marple. So if you like Miss Marple, you’d probably enjoy the Miss Silver mysteries.
Wentworth was born in India. She married there. But after her husband died unexpectedly, she returned to the UK with her daughter and her stepsons. She eventually married again and wrote mostly historical fiction. But then in 1923, Jane Smith, The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith, was published.
It’s not a whodunit. It’s more a blend of mystery, romance, and adventure. And that was very common for what were marketed as mysteries at that time. But they had a huge, heavy dose of romance and adventure usually. So they were not puzzle mysteries. They’re more an adventure mystery. Very similar in tone to Agatha Christie’s, The Secret Adversary.
Themes and Tropes
Themes in The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith are related to Independence because she wants to be independent, and she has a way out in the very beginning. She goes to meet an old friend of hers, Henry, who just happens to work at Scotland Yard. So nice when it works out that way. When your old flame or I guess in this day and age, it would have been called a beau, is employed at Scotland Yard. So she goes to see him and she knows she’s putting, she knows that this thing that she’s considering doing is very dangerous, and so she goes to see him. And part of the reason she does that is she wants someone to know where she’s going, because basically no one in the whole world will know where she is. Because once she trades places with her cousin, her cousin is leaving England. And she, Jane wants someone, she wants to have some backup. So you’ve got this theme of independence because she goes to speak to Henry and he tries to say, you know, “I can help you out, I won’t let you do this.” And she doesn’t want to be told what to do, and she doesn’t want to be dependent on him. So even though this is dangerous, she’s going to do it anyway.
And then she also has some Patriotic Impulses. This is a matter of national security. She realizes she has a unique opportunity. She’s in an unusual position. She can help root out some really awful people if she puts her own life in danger and she’s willing to do that. So there is an element to adventure, to this story and to her personality. She’s willing to take a risk. It’s a really interesting paradox that Wentworth sets up because Jane asserts her independence to do as she pleases. So Henry wants to help her so that she doesn’t have to be involved in this financially or otherwise because they have this past romantic relationship. And he’s obviously still very fond of her, but she doesn’t want to be indebted to him in that way for rescuing her. So she’s going to do as she pleases and she goes to this house. But in doing that, she essentially ends up a prisoner in this big house on the coast. So she’s exercised her freedom and it’s put her in a position where she’s a prisoner. The people there are very suspicious of her and it’s not a safe place. So those two themes of the Independence and the Adventure are sort of interwoven throughout the story and in Jane’s personality.
OK, fun part: onto the tropes. There’s a caricature or stereotype of The Plain Jane. And Jane is not a gorgeous beauty. One of the women who lives in this house when she goes there is an amazingly, classically beautiful woman in Jane is not. She’s attractive, but she’s not incredibly, amazingly beautiful. So even though she would be, I guess, classified as a plain Jane, she has this thread of adventure and courage running through her. She’s willing to go to this perilous situation and put herself in danger. She also makes a really good sleuth. In her conversation with Henry, she describes why she would be a good person to go to this house and put herself in this situation. She says she knows “heaps of languages.” She says, “I’ve got eyes like gimlets and I can do lipreading.” So the person she lived with before, before he died and she was, you know, out on her own, had a deaf housekeeper. The housekeeper learned lipreading, and Jane learned it as well because she was interested in it. Which makes me think of the Mission Impossible books or Mission Impossible movies with Tom Cruise and how an essential part of one of those movies is that he knows lipreading. So there you go. There’s the connection between Jane Smith and what’s his name, Ethan Hunt from the Mission Impossible movies. So there you go. A little bonus trivia.
Another trope we have in The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith is the trope of the main character being Down and Out. And she is very down and out. She’s looking at her entire worldly fortune when the book opens and it’s two shilling and eleven pence. And she’s worried because somehow she’s missing a couple of coins. So she is definitely in dire straits. And a lot of times in modern cozies, and amateur sleuth mysteries, this involves the main character going back to their hometown and kind of falling back on family. Jane doesn’t have any family, or any family that she can go to or any close friends. So she really is all on her own.
Lots and lots of Gothic tropes in The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith, too. You’ve got the deserted, lonely old mansion in this book. It’s, you know, on this cliff by the sea. And it’s surrounded by this kind of marshy sort of no man’s land. So you’ve got that and then there’s the secret passages. Don’t really want to say more than that because I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s lots of suspense in this.
Jane Doesn’t Know Who she can Trust and there is no one else she can depend on. Henry does come up with an excuse to go to this country house that’s out by the sea on the cliffs. But he can’t stay and he can’t really freely communicate with her because it would cause suspicion. So there’s a lot of questions about who’s trustworthy and who’s not. And there’s a lot of identity issues in this book. We’ve got Jane pretending to be her cousin, and then you don’t know if the characters are trustworthy and if they’re who they say they are in the book. So I will leave it at that.
And then another trope involved in this book is Conspiracy. The reason Jane goes to this mansion on the coast is because it’s believed that the people who live there are at the center of this conspiracy.
Influence
We are at the influence of this book. For me, this was a huge influence on me, personally. I was planning to write a series set in the 1920s which became, you know, the High Society Lady Detective series. And the first book is Murder at Archly Manor. So as I was researching and trying to figure out what I wanted to write about, I was reading lots of books that were written in the early 1920s because I knew that was a time period I wanted to focus on. And I’d read The Secret Adversary. And I looked around for other female sleuth books and I found Jane Smith. And that was about all I found. I got the book and I was reading it, trying to absorb like the language. And I really enjoyed Jane’s wonderfully practical approach to life. Even though she’s in the midst of this crazy situation, she’s funny and self-deprecating at the same time. So I really enjoyed that tone. She has gumption or in the terminology of the 1920s, people would have said she has pluck. She has she’s a plucky character. Even though things are really bad, she’s not going to let it get her down. She’s going to fight her way out of this horrible situation.
As a writer, I looked at it and I thought, OK, she’s got agency. She’s going to do whatever she can to solve her own problems. She’s not going to sit back and let someone else take care of it for her. So that was really interesting, and I really liked that about her. And I read a lot more books set in the early 1920s in the 1910s. And a female character with agency is very rare. Especially finding a book from the female point of view with the person, with the protagonist having agency. I really enjoyed reading this just as a reader. And I just absorbed everything I could from it, and try to put that sort of the tone in the language and some of that attitude into my sleuth.
This book also marked a new, at the beginning of a new, trend in Patricia Wentworth’s writing. After this, she began to trend more and more into the mystery elements of her stories, and eventually she would be writing the classic whodunit, the classic mystery plots. So this, I think, was an important book. If you like Patricia Wentworth and you’re interested in her stories, it’s an interesting book to look at. This is where her career sort of took a turn.
It’s also the first of a new project I’ve been working on: bringing classic mysteries out that have been forgotten or overlooked. Bring them back into ebook and print for modern readers. So the link for the version of The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith with my introduction to it will be in the show notes.
Quotes
OK, so let’s end on a quote. This is Jane’s response to the proposition that she trade places with her cousin. Her cousin’s name is Renata, and her cousin’s fiancee has come up with this idea that they should trade places. And he says, you know, here’s my idea. What do you think about it? And her response is, “You’ve made it beautifully clear. Renata is in a position of deadly peril–I think that’s what you called it–and the simple way out is for Renata to elope with you to South America, and for me to be in a position of deadly peril instead. It’s a beautiful plan.” So I like that that. She lays out the plan, and then you see her humor and sort of her deadpan humor coming through with this.
My question for you is, do you enjoy Golden Age fiction? And have you read any books from the early 1920s? I hope this podcast has let you revisit a favorite book or perhaps helped you discover a new author to try. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, I hope you’ll tell fellow mystery readers. Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you next time.
Outtakes:
Patricia whitweh Whitmore’s riding. Wentworth’s writing. Lots of gloth ok lots of Gothic.
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